Five Things – 08.03.15 – Chili Can Be Served With Cheese

1. Disneyland Haunted Mansion Special – In typical Disney fashion, here’s a special produced to celebrate the 1970 debut of the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland. This one’s a little more sedate than some of the other specials I’ve featured in Five Things; it seems a little more natural than the overblown specials of the 1980s and 1990s.

This one features the Osmond Brothers, E.J. Peaker, and a very young Kurt Russell. The Osmonds and Peaker arrive to perform at the park and Donny and Jay quickly run off to ride some rides and check out the new Haunted Mansion ride. The bulk of the special consists of the rest of them scouring the park to find Donny and Jay. The odd thing about this show is that it assumes that you already know all about Disneyland; the cast travels around to the different attractions but no effort is made to point them out and explain what they are. Like I said, sedate – something they’d quickly remedy in later specials.

There are about five musical numbers in the special plus a really cool featurette at the end about the construction and design behind the Haunted Mansion ride. Then the Osmonds and E.J. go through the ride.

All in all, pretty fun. A beautiful look at the park in 1970, if nothing else.

2. Chili Can Be Served With Cheese – Two and a half minutes of groovy music teaching you how to serve Chili at Wendy’s. There are a LOT of ways to do it wrong!

3. NES DuckTales Commercial – A handful of super rad kids playing this super rad game in a futuristic sort of arena? Whatever, DuckTales was awesome.

4. 1970 Masterpiece Board Game – Apparently Parker Brothers thought the sixpack public would enjoy playing a game about expensive art auctions the same way that they enjoyed being landowners in Monopoly. I think they were wrong? Does anyone have fond memories of this game? The spot itself is great.